The picture of linguistics one can get from books like The Linguistics Wars (Harris 1993) and press coverage of l’affaire du Pirahã suggests it is a quite nasty sort of field, full of hate and invective. Is linguistics really, as an engineer colleague would have it, “unusually vituperative”?

In my opinion it is not, for I object to the modifier unusually. Indeed, while such stories rarely make the nightly news, the sciences have never been without a heft dose of vituperation. For instance, anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon was accused, slanderously and at book length, of causing a measles epidemic among indigenous peoples of the Amazon. And entomologist E.O. Wilson had a pitcher of water poured on his head at a lecture because, according to a lone audience member, his research on ants implied support for eugenics. And even gentleman Darwin was not above keeping an ill-tempered bulldog.

References

Harris, R. A. 1993. The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle over Deep Structure. Oxford University Press. [I don’t recommend this book: Harris, instead of explaining the issues at stake, focuses on “horse race” coverage, quoting extensively from interviews with America’s grumpiest octogenarians.]